Updated kernel packages that fix several security issues and several bugsare now available for Red Hat Enterprise MRG 1.1.

This update has been rated as having important security impact by the RedHat Security Response Team.

2. Relevant releases/architectures:

MRG Realtime for RHEL 5 Server - i386, noarch, x86_64

3. Description:

The kernel packages contain the Linux kernel, the core of any Linuxoperating system.

These updated packages address the following security issues:

* a flaw was found in the Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) subsystem. Alocal, unprivileged user could use the flaw to listen on the same socketmore than once, possibly causing a denial of service. (CVE-2008-5079,Important)

* a buffer overflow flaw was found in the libertas driver. This could,potentially, lead to a remote denial of service when an invalid beacon orprobe response was received. (CVE-2008-5134, Important)

* a race condition was found in the Linux kernel "inotify" watch removaland umount implementation. This could allow a local, unprivileged user to cause a privilege escalation or a denial of service. (CVE-2008-5182, Important)

* the sendmsg() function in the Linux kernel did not block during UNIXsocket garbage collection. This could, potentially, lead to a local denialof service. (CVE-2008-5300, Important)

* a buffer overflow was found in the Linux kernel Partial Reliable StreamControl Transmission Protocol (PR-SCTP) implementation. This could,potentially, lead to a denial of service if a Forward-TSN chunk is receivedwith a large stream ID. (CVE-2009-0065, Important)

* a deficiency was found in the libATA implementation. This could,potentially, lead to a denial of service. By default, the "/dev/sg*"devices are accessible only to the root user. (CVE-2008-5700, Low)

These updated packages also address numerous bugs, including the following:

* a race condition caused the timer to stop responding. This was fixed bycorrecting the behavior of the alloc_posix_timer() function.

* a check was included on the limit of the shadow.bytes array, to preventvalue outside the limits being written and over riding other data areas.

* the kernel-rt-2.6.24.7-81.el5rt kernel displayed a warning on bootstating that the hwclock failed. This was due to a compatibility problemwith the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 file system. It was resolved by addinga new udev rule that ensured /dev was set up correctly.

* the GPS clock daemon was becoming unstable due to a problem in adjtimex.The issue was located and corrected.

* the events_trace tracer was providing bad parameters to syscalls on i386machines. This was due to the sys_call interface needing to use theassembly linked annotation and the edx register being used before it wasstored on the stack. Both these issues were corrected.

All Red Hat Enterprise MRG users should install this update which addressesthese vulnerabilities and fixes these bugs. For this update to take effect,the system must be rebooted.

4. Solution:

Before applying this update, make sure that all previously-releasederrata relevant to your system have been applied.

This update is available via Red Hat Network. Details on how to usethe Red Hat Network to apply this update are available athttp://kbase.redhat.com/faq/docs/DOC-11259